Good evening everyone! Just letting you know my new and improved panel "Board with History" will be taking place at the Elmhurst Public Library's Comic Con celebration this Saturday (8/1) from 11:30-12:30. Stop on by for some educational history based board and card games as well as advice on how to evaluate games for their educational value.
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Greetings everyone! Just letting people know there are new convention photos up on the cosplay page.
Secondary news, I will be doing my improved social studies panel "Board with History" at the Elmhurst Public Library during their Comic Con event in August. When I find out the time I will post that information here. Since I'm officially off my regular teaching job hopefully posts will be more frequent and less sloppy than they have been for the past few months. Although no promises since I'm not very good at keeping that promise. Hi everyone! Had a really great start to winter break with my literacy panel this morning. As usual it was a small turnout but one with a lot of really great people to meet and share new ideas with. Panel two (The PS3 is a Time Machine) got moved to 8pm tonight in panel room one so if you are board feel free to stop by! Just letting everyone know my panel time for ConAltDel has been confirmed. Due to a scheduling error I will be combining both my literacy and my social studies panels into one. They will take place on Saturday 10:30-11:45 in either panel room 1 or 2. (I'm not exactly sure atm). Hope to see some fellow gamers and educators out there! Hello everyone!
Just taking an opportunity to highlight a workshop a colleague of mine is going to be doing on creative writing. If you are in the Chicagoland area please check it out! Park District catalog: http://en.calameo.com/read/0020548917e49a4bf263a I hope everyone is excited for the upcoming Thanksgiving break! Here's two articles that I found interesting to tide everyone over until regular posts resume starting in January. Until then I'll be doing little incidental posts so I can focus on finishing my last month teaching middle level LA and preparing for my new panel on Social Studies instruction.
Why Cliques Form at Some High Schools and Not Others and Getting Better at Getting Better I'm excited to tell everyone that my two panels have been confirmed for Con Alt Delete in Rosemont. Times will be announced as soon as I am informed myself.
Until then I'll be busy making adjustments to my literacy panel and plowing ahead on the creation of my new social studies panel. And as a complete side note my sci fi plays ended up being adorable! Though a little bloody. A lot of death by aliens and robots! Today's lesson idea stemmed from an interesting problem. I love science fiction. I find the exploration of humanity and the wondering of the future to spark some really interesting discussions.
However, I really don't like the sci-fi book in our curriculum. I'm not going to name names because I'm sure that there are people who love this book, but I just couldn't get into it as hard as I tried. So I needed to come up with a way to show students how awesome science fiction could be without having to fake it. Turns out I'm a terrible fibber and my students inevitably figure out which books I like and which ones I don't without me saying a word. My solution was to delve into the world of HG Wells and share the epic ly famous Orsen Wells radio drama of War of the Worlds. The response was fantastic. While we did not have enough time to listen to the whole program they were entranced and inspired by the experience. This led to both my class and my colleague's class crafting their own science fiction radio dramas. We will be performing them later this week so I'll keep everyone informed on how it goes. Fingers crossed! As seems to often be the case I'm currently adjusting and implementing new features on my website. Please let me know if you encounter any issues when using the site.
Since I've been rather busy with the day job and making plans for the site there won't be a major update this weekend. Never fear though, I plan to try and get Halloween and Spirit Week photos up soon! Recently I have begun collecting a fine collection of early proto operas, madrigals, and 20th century classical works. While I am pleased to have gained 35 very fine classical recordings in the past week and a half the reason for it is making me a little sad. The truth is that my local library has decided that their function is not as a repository of knowledge but as a community service center where students may gather, drink coffee, and read the most recent best seller. In order to make room for more study rooms and a bigger cafe area my library has unofficially decided to cull their collection by 1/3. This is not being publicly announced to the public but when pressed by me about the amount of reference books and expensive opera collections in the donation room I was unofficially told the reason.
I was dumb founded. I pressed further as is my right as a member of the community, and discovered that the library has a practice of buying 10-20 copies of a single new best seller so patrons can check them out immediately. Then when checkouts slow they are thrown in the donation bin. Now I am not an expert on business but buying 20 hardcover copies and then dumping 18 of them in a room where they can merely be picked over by people does not make sense. So not only is the library buying dozens if not hundreds of books and then practically giving them away they are also getting rid of books worth money and containing truly important knowledge. (Interruption: My one exception to this rule is with kid books. BUY ALL THE KID BOOKS! Kid books are massively expensive and the more that kids read the better. Just please donate them to schools in need or students learning to read in 3rd world countries after instead of putting them in the booksale room. If the library donated their lightly used books to children who might not have ever owned a book before I would at least feel I was doing a good deed for education.) I admittedly was a bit of a handful after being so flabbergasted and was informed in a rather annoyed tone that the library's function was to serve the needs and desires of the community. Other more important University libraries were there to garner knowledge. Which leads me to my current conundrum Are libraries there to provide disposable paperbacks and latte's to the community or do they have an obligation to also house rare and informative books in addition to having the newest Nora Robert's thriller? My gut says yes to both. Libraries have a duty to not only provide what library patrons want and what they don't realize they want. During my time at school, the university library was a source of infinite wonder and exploration. I read things I didn't even realize I wanted to read because I happened upon them. At the same time I also took advantage of some really interesting library programming on a variety of different subjects such as art, science, and music. Sound like I am contradicting myself? Well I suppose I am and I am not. Let me clarify a little. The library's function is to serve the community's literacy needs. This means providing access to internet and to books, magazines, newspapers, and other media. My gripe with my local library is that they are disposing of vast quantities of 'unpopular' items like non-fiction, classical music, and reference books but not replacing them with other items in the same category. For example, if my library were to dispose of a 1960s text on lunar geology (unless it was signed by my favorite NASA scientist, Farouk El-Baz of course) and replace it with say a new 2015 book by Neil deGrasse Tyson that would be fine. Actually that would be great because it would have a more accurate version of the knowledge contained in the original book. However, instead of replacing the book they are merely removing the topic from the library. This is where my anger stems from. I've heard several people give the argument that the internet is replacing the need for this sort of information in libraries, but I'm not sure. Call me old fashioned but what happens when the library inevitably gets hacked and all the 'information' is lost because it is all digital data? Are books fool proof? No, but I feel a lot safer having my information in multiple format, including one I can access without electricity. I'm writing the conclusion to this post two weeks after initially writing it. My temper has had time to cool a bit, but I'm still concerned about what happens when libraries get rid of books. Yes, you can look for things on the internet, but you can't meander about it in the same way you can be surprised by a tome on a shelf. But I am curious to hear what others have to say on the matter. So do you think libraries are there to be community service facilities? Or are they also obligated to be a place where people can explore and learn from the media on their shelves without any goal other than enjoyment? |
Gamifying Teacher
A blog for teachers who like video games. Check out my What is Gamifying Teacher? page for more info. Archives
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